For this week’s crowdfunding profile, we travel to Central America where the husband-and-wife team of Guillermo Tovar C. and Nadia Mendoza A. is working feverishly to complete Costa Rica’s first full-length animated feature
“>The Esoteric Birthday (El Cumpleaños Esotérico). They have been working on the film for the past two years, and plan to finish it by this December. They describe their unconventional-looking movie as an “experimental digital” animated film:
The Esoteric Birthday tells the story of the coming of age of a peculiar little girl who is about to become a powerful witch. She has to undergo a ceremony of initiation that involves a series of dangerous trials. It all takes place in a fantastic and mysterious tropical island, with over 50 characters, like a group of intergalactic witchdoctors, a religious sect of wild animals, two cannibal Amazonian warrior twins, and lots and lots more.
Guillermo and Nadia, who operate as Interdimensional Studio, are asking for $25,000 for the post production which includes sound design, original music, and hiring a small crew of local animators for lighting, texturing and compositing. The entire 70-minute film will be released online at no charge after its festival run in 2014. The rewards they are offering include drawings from the pre-production phase and having a donor’s face drawn into the film as a background character. They have currently raised just over $4,000 with 51 days left in their campaign.
